Matching‐adjusted comparison of oral corticosteroid reduction in asthma: Systematic review of biologics
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Oral corticosteroid (OCS) treatment for severe asthma is associated with substantial disease burden. Thus, OCS dosage reduction is desirable. Relative efficacy of biologics in reducing OCS treatment for severe, uncontrolled asthma is not fully characterized. OBJECTIVE: We performed a matching-adjusted indirect comparison (MAIC) to assess the relative effects on OCS treatment reduction of three biologic asthma treatments. METHODS: In MAIC of benralizumab vs. mepolizumab and vs. dupilumab, patient-level data from the Phase III benralizumab OCS-sparing trial, ZONDA, were weighted to match treatment effect-modifying patient characteristics in comparator trials. RESULTS: After matching adjustment, mean difference between benralizumab and mepolizumab for OCS reduction was 6.08% (95% CI -22.22-34.38; P = .67) by week 24, and odds ratio of OCS elimination was 2.32 (95% CI 0.48-11.15; P = .29). A trend in annual asthma exacerbation rate reduction favouring benralizumab over mepolizumab was observed, although it was not statistically significant (rate ratio [RR] = 0.56 [95% CI 0.28-1.13; P = .11]). Mean difference between benralizumab and dupilumab for OCS reduction was -0.71% (95% CI -20.56-19.15; P = .94), and odds ratio of OCS elimination was 2.26 (95% CI 0.52-9.84; P = .28). A non-significant trend in annual asthma exacerbation rate reduction favouring benralizumab over dupilumab was observed (RR = 0.50 [95% CI 0.20-1.28; P = .15]). Effective sample size was 49% (72 vs. 148) and 25% (36 vs. 142) of original sample size for MAIC of benralizumab vs. mepolizumab and benralizumab vs. dupilumab, respectively. CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE: Following patient baseline characteristics matching across clinical trials, benralizumab demonstrated efficacy comparable to mepolizumab and dupilumab for OCS dosage reduction, OCS elimination, and annual exacerbation rate reduction. Comparatively low effective sample sizes indicated substantial differences for patient populations between ZONDA and mepolizumab and dupilumab trials.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.008 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".